Episode 118: More Than Comfortable Companions

Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope and this is The Loving Truth. Today we're going to be talking about how we fall into this place of just being comfortable companions inside of a marriage. Now, in my first marriage, if you were standing on the outside of it looking in. You would think that's a really good marriage.

Everything seems the way it should be. Right? And it was about eight or nine years into the relationship that I started to feel just empty and disconnected. But I couldn't really put my finger on what it was or why I was feeling that way. You know, I had done what I was supposed to do. I married a good, solid human being.

Right, and, and I had the things, we had, the things that I thought we were supposed to have. You know, we had a four bedroom home in the suburbs. We both had good jobs, we had nice cars. We took vacations. We even had the golden retriever that we named Bailey. I mean, everything looked a certain way. We didn't fight much.

My ex-husband was not much of a fighter. And I remember. Very clearly one of my good friends saying to me, oh, that's so good for you, Sharon, that he doesn't fight very much. 'cause I can be a little spicy sometimes. But I remember seeing other couples around that time, and I would watch them, you know, I'd watch how they would look at each other and how present they were for each other, how they had this natural sort of affection between them.

And you could just tell by looking at them that they were in love. And my husband and I, we didn't have that. We had never had that, like not even early on in our relationship during the honeymoon phase when everything's supposed to be really lovey dovey and really great. And so I started asking for more connection and more affection.

And really, he did his best to oblige, but he thought our marriage was fine. He didn't know what it was I was asking for exactly. And he didn't really know why I wanted it, and I couldn't really articulate those things to him. And I think probably we were both asking like, why can't you just be happy? Like, look at our lives.

What is it that you're reaching for? Why can't you just be happy? And I know that I'm not alone in that because I've now had thousands of women sort of parrot that back to me. In some way, shape or form in terms of they're reaching for more. They don't want to just be comfortable companions. And while their marriage isn't horrible, it's not destructive.

It may not even be toxic, but it's not connected and it's not loving, and it feels like it should feel different, and it should be something more than just comfortable companions. See there's millions of women who are reaching for more in their marriage and wondering like, why aren't we more connected?

Why don't I feel more supported? And then there's probably millions of men going, what's the problem? We're fine. Why do you worry so much? I mean, everyone argues from time to time, and then maybe you ask him to go to counseling with you or something in the process of trying to work through this disconnection, and then he says something to you like, well, you can go do that if you want, but I don't.

I don't need that. We don't need that. We're fine. So it got me thinking, why are women more discontent or unfulfilled in their marriages than men seem to be? Especially when two thirds of the time today, it's women that are asking for the divorce. And if that woman is college educated, that number goes to 90% of the time.

So when a woman comes to a man and says, I'm feeling disconnected, I, I feel like we're pulling away from each other, I'm unhappy. Like that is when we need to pay attention and not just brush off. Those words as if it's nothing, and try to just make it go away so that we don't really have to deal with it.

Right? So there's a lot of women unhappy or unfulfilled. There's a lot of men going, what's the problem? So why are women more unfulfilled or more unsatisfied in their marriages than men? I think I've come up with three broad reasons now. This is not about blame. This is not about who's at fault here. This is just about the dynamics that are happening inside of marriages today, because I think we're at a very interesting time in terms of where marriage is today because what we were brought up on.

When we were looked at our parents' relationship, they operated very differently than the way marriages operate today. And it's such a state of flux that many of us are just sort of playing catch up to that. Okay, so this is not about blame. It's also some broad generalizations. It doesn't mean that every man is like this or that.

Every woman is like this, right? But these are broad brush strokes and see if you can find yourself in any of these. If you're trying to make sense of why you feel so disconnected and can't figure out why you're not happy, in what should be a perfectly fine and happy and comfortable marriage, and maybe why your husband isn't as concerned as maybe you are.

So the first one is that I think that women's expectations of what marriage should be are higher than what men expect. Now stay with me here, especially ladies. Many of us, if you really stop and think about it today. What we want is we want our spouse to be our biggest supporter, our biggest cheerleader, our best friend.

They wanna be the person we wanna stay up late and talk to about our deepest fears and our biggest dreams. We want them to be someone that we can be quiet with, but someone we can have a great time with. We can have fun with that we can laugh with. We want them to be close and sometimes far we, we need a little distance.

We need a little space, but we also don't, we also want them to be our most passionate lover all the time. So our bar. For how we want to feel and what we want to experience in our lives. Right now we're sort of looking to spouses to be that end all, be all for all the things that we wanna feel and experience.

Where a generation or two ago, you would get that from a whole community of people, right? It wasn't just, it was friendships and it was close family relationships and sisters and all the things, right? So. Now we have some really high expectations for marriage. And if you ask me, are they too high? Yes. In general, when we put that much pressure on any one person to be all things for us, we are sort of setting ourselves up for a bit of disappointment, right?

So I think the pendulum has swung a bit too far, and we might be. Served very well to just look at that and bring that a little bit back into alignment. We're not in the same generation as where women are stuck, if you will. Right. Like we can leave a relationship and live a very happy life where my mother and my grandmother, if they left their marriage, they could be literally destitute.

They may not know how to support themselves and their families. Even though my mother worked like this was the, it wasn't until like the seventies is when it became law that that banks could loan money to women, but that didn't mean they wanted to. Right. So it wasn't until the eighties or nineties that women could actually get a loan.

So we are not as trapped as our mothers probably were. But we also have just reached a little bit too far because marriage, if you think back, it really was a business arrangement, right? Like, you man, are going to provide me providing and protecting. Right. And then I am going to provide to you. I'm going to bear children.

I'm gonna take care of those children. I'm gonna take care of you and the family and the home. Right? I'm gonna make us have a good life. And it was sort of this business arrangement and we've brought some of that into our marriages today because we are looking for the other person to meet all of our needs.

But our needs are just very different today. They're emotional needs, whereas before they were providing and protecting, I. Today, women don't necessarily need providing and protecting. We need more of those emotional needs. But that's not what was modeled for most of our husbands growing up in terms of what it looked like to be a husband, a man, a father that wasn't modeled for them or taught to them.

And when I think about what men look to marriage for today, I think it's probably things like they want kindness, they want appreciation, they want respect. And they probably want some degree of consistent sex, right? So women have a higher bar in terms of our expectations of what to get from marriage than I think men do, again, in a broad brush stroke.

Okay? The second thing I would say is that when it comes to sort of what makes us feel successful in our lives and fulfilled in our lives. For women. I think the top of that hierarchy is the quality and health of our relationships. Like if I feel great about my life and I feel really successful, it comes down to my relationships.

It could be my, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with my family, my relationship with my closest friends, and of course my relationship with my spouse, because that's my most intimate relationship. So the quality and health of our relationships is really, really, really important to most women, not to all women.

Okay. And when you think about when a husband feels really fulfilled and successful in his life, think about what's at the top of his pyramid. For many men, and again, this is not all men relationships, is not at the top of his pyramid. What is career and financial success? Now, part of that is so that he can provide for his family, right?

But what men are sort of socialized to be as it relates to being successful is being successful professionally and then subsequently that leads to financial success and stability and security. Right. So it doesn't mean that men don't care about relationships. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying like at the end of the day, what really, really matters to women is relationships.

And I'm not sure at the end of the day that what really, really matters to men is relationships. I think it's something else. I suspect many men, it's still my profession and how I'm providing the third thing. And I'm just gonna say this, brace yourself. Marriage has always been a better deal for men than it has been for women.

I mean, think about it. So even when women went, went to work in the seventies, the whole feminist movement, we didn't do ourselves a favor here because we went back to work, but we never gave up everything that we did at home. And so now women are working full time. They're having the kids, they're literally bearing the kids.

They're taking care of the kids, particularly when they're very young, but they're making sure that the kids have the snacks in the pantry that they need, that they have the breakfast that they need. They do all the grocery shopping. They make sure that. You know, they figure out what's for dinner every night.

They help the kids with their homework. They make sure that they have what they need for school. They make sure that, um, they've been to the dentist and the doctor. They're the ones making the doctor's appointments. They're the ones making all the plans for the birthday parties and the family get togethers.

They're the ones probably, but not always calling the plumber when a plumber is needed around the house or making sure that everyone knows it's Aunt Linda's birthday today. And so let's make her a card and. Give her a call and all the things, right? So women still carry a very heavy load inside of marriage and families today.

I'm not suggesting that men also don't have a lot to do, but oftentimes when you look at the balance, many times it is out of balance. It's really never perfectly in balance, and it certainly never stays that way. Although I do have hope for. You know, younger generations that that is getting better. So if you look at it from that perspective, like, yeah, marriage has always been a better deal for men than it has been for women.

'cause for the most part, men they need to go to work. That's what they've been taught. You go to work and you provide for the family, and that's your way of protecting and keeping the family safe. There was a comedian that I heard recently. It was just a reel on Instagram or something and, and she was joking and she said, can you imagine where I would be today if I had a wife at home just like me holding it down the way that I do for my husband?

Oh my God, I'd be 10 years ahead of where I am right now in my, in my career. And everyone was laughing because you know the things that are funny. Particularly in a comedy show are the things that are, are ironically very true. Right. And the other thing to think at think about is when you look at men and women post-divorce, men will always couple up much more quickly than a woman will.

Maybe I shouldn't say always. Very often men will get involved in a serious relationship much more quickly than a woman will. And the reason for that is that if you could have someone taking care of you like that, why wouldn't you? Right? Of course you would, right? But women, it's just a different dynamic.

And so sometimes women after a divorce, they're not ready to rush back in and get involved in a relationship again, where they feel like they not only have to take care of themselves and their kids, they also then have to take care of all the things that maybe he's not gonna do. Right. So I know some of that stuff is hard to hear, but we've gotta come up with some ideas of like, why are women so much more unhappy and unfulfilled in relationships and why are women the ones that are driving the divorce rate right now?

And I will just say it like this, I think that women expect a lot because women give a lot. Right. And at the end of the day, what really, really matters to most women is not just being comfortable and safe anymore. We wanna go beyond just being comfortable companions with our spouse. We want that loving, connected, even passionate and adventurous relationship with our spouse.

And at the end of the day. What really, really matters to most women is the health and quality of our relationships. I hope that's helpful for you. Until next time, please take really good care.